I cover entrepreneurs, people who create value (and make money) out of the ideas in their heads. I spent three years on staff at Forbes before leaving to start Haymaker , a PR firm for startups, in May 2014. (Don't worry, I never write about my clients.) In the age of "The Social Network" myth, I get a kick out of delving into the reality of launching a business. Before joining Forbes I spent a year toiling in startup obscurity at Squidjob.com. Since my bedroom was the office, I never had to sleep under my desk. Comments, tips and forceful criticism are appreciated.

The Facebook Job Board Is Here: Recruiting Will Never Look The Same

FacebookFacebook announced its long-awaited job board this morning, ushering in a new era of online recruiting and, eventually, what’s likely to be an important new source of revenue for the company. After a yearlong “Social Jobs Partnership” with the U.S. Department of Labor and other government agencies, the company released the Social Jobs Partnership application today, an interactive job board that aggregates 1.7 million openings from recruiting companies already working on the platform, including Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Jobvite, DirectEmployers and Monster.com.

Though a spokesperson for the company insists the announcement does not mean Facebook is entering the recruiting industry, that statement appears far-fetched given the capability of the application. The page allows users to search for jobs by location, industry and skill; apply to them directly through Facebook; and then share the jobs to their social network. Its developer partners also believe Facebook is making a clear statement of its intentions. “Facebook is launching a jobs page within Facebook,” notes Stephane Le Viet, founder and CEO of Work4 Labs. “This is a very big disruption in a very large space.”

The company’s own blog post reveals some telling statistics about the potential for recruiting over the platform. According to Facebook, half of employers in the U.S. use the social network during their hiring process. Of those companies already using Facebook to engage with customers, 54 percent anticipate using it more heavily in their recruitment efforts in the future. Given those numbers, the lucrative nature of the recruitment industry and the success of companies like Work4 Labs—not to mention increasing pressure from battered shareholders—it appears likely that Facebook will seek monetize recruitment efforts at some point soon.

Le Viet surmises that the current application is just an early, lightweight version intended to test recruiting on the platform. It also serves to trigger a PR push letting the general public know that the social network is now a place to find jobs. A more robust version may eventually mean users will see more recruitment-related activity on their newsfeeds.

The Social Jobs Partnership was meant to serve as a consortium to guide the company’s recruitment offering.

So does November 14, 2012 mark the beginning of the end for LinkedInLinkedIn? The varied demographics of Facebook certainly differ from LinkedIn’s 175 million older, college-educated users. Le Viet’s Work4 Labs acknowledges this reality, focusing on entry-level and hourly positions rather than the salaried openings that LinkedIn has covered. And as Forbes contributor George Anders noted in a July cover story, LinkedIn Recruiter, the company’s enterprise recruitment tool, is the company’s core business. They have a three-year head start and a product with cachet among recruiters said to rival that of BloombergBloomberg terminals among traders. LinkedIn is also a trusted, professional brand created for the explicit purpose of business networking. Older employees may not feel comfortable mixing work with a social platform better known for kegstand photos.

The sheer size of Facebook’s user base however, means that the company can slice the population a number of different ways. Though only 22 percent of users are above the age of 45, that’s still 220 million people–more than LinkedIn’s entire platform. And Facebook has already been used effectively to recruit lower-skilled workers. A foothold in the lower end of the market could serve as a nice starting point for moving upstream and eating LinkedIn’s business. The twenty-somethings who tend profiles on both LinkedIn and Facebook may not care where their next job comes from.

What is certain? Traditional online job boards like Monster.com are on the way out. While Monster has seen its market share and stock price plummet in recent years, LinkedIn has soared and Facebook’s developer partners–Work4 Labs, BranchOut and Jobvite–have raised tens of millions of dollars to pursue social graph-based recruiting models. The future of recruiting is decidedly social.

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“Facebook has always been seen as off limits by the career-minded because it separated personal and professional lives” Totally agree with this. It will be a cold day in hell before I would ever even consider posting any detail whatsoever about my career on Facebook over and above my job title. Serious minded career professionals do not hang out on Facebook waiting for, or looking for, jobs. They know there are far better more focused channels already out there/ It’s a bit like the Ford Motor Company moving into the banana selling market because they one days realised they had millions of people on their database. Numbers alone do not equate to quality. Of the 1bn Facebook members how many are a) teenagers b) retired c) spambots d) false accounts e) dormant accounts f) middle aged men pretending to be teenagers … etc. etc. etc. Facebook and recruitment were not a marriage made in heaven. Try it if it’s for free by all means, but don’t bank on it to deliver results.

I work with a Dallas IT staffing agency and many recruiters have told me they have all but eliminated their spending on job boards, which often charge per job posting. Others have found that although LinkedIn is more comprehensive as a résumé database, candidates tend to value referrals from Facebook connections much more, and are also easier to reach on Facebook since they spend much more time there than on LinkedIn. Than Nguyen www.insourcegroup.com

I’ve already read several articles and blogs about the dangers of fusing Facebook with job recruiting. So far, I can’t say any of the posters have really talked about that issue in FB’s defense. Seriously, you think that line there about mixing party photos with work is a light joke?

While I can understand the ideal behind uniting both professional and personal lives, I think a bit of realism is in order. Just looking at my own friends, I am not sure I’d want to be in their shoes OR their recruiter’s. Ask yourself: Would it make your hiring decision easier after seeing your applicant dressed up as Fred Flintstone?

Hmmmm…..posting pics from last night’s party AND applying for a job all in the same place….hmmmm. Not feeling this at all. Facebook is my place to play- not apply for jobs. Will this really work in the favor of genX???